Making Dough

Ellen DeGeneres Gave the Oscars Pizza Delivery Man a $1,000 Tip

Ellen DeGeneres had the people everyone’s been talking about on her post-Oscars show yesterday: Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong’o . . . and Edgar Martirosyan. Martirosyan—better known (and, likely, forever to be known) as the Guy Who Delivered Pizza to the Oscars—is the co-owner of West Hollywood pizza shop Big Mama’s and Papa’s Pizzeria. Martirosyan revealed that he had not had any clue that he would be rubbing shoulders with Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, let alone have his visage transmitted into millions of homes across the world.

No, as some had wrongly assumed, the pizza delivery guy was not an actor. Martirosyan said he received a call to deliver 20 pizzas to the Dolby Theatre, and had been told he would be bringing them for the writers of the show. When he arrived, DeGeneres greeted him and asked him to follow her, without giving him any indication of what he would be walking into.

On her show, DeGeneres handed Martirosyan the $600 she had received from the A-listers in the audience (collected in Pharrell’s hat), and then added an additional $400 from herself.

The 30-year-old Martirosyan—who was born in Armenia, and moved to Russia at age 10—said that Roberts had always been the “woman [of his] dreams,” telling the Los Angeles Times that she was “more beautiful in person.”

Let the countdown begin until Martirosyan nabs a reality show—or, at the very least, a spot on Dancing with the Stars.